Application utility steps

This topic describes utility steps for application processes.

To use these steps, select Utility Steps in the Tools pane of your application process.

In this topic:

Acquire Lock and Release Lock steps

Use the Acquire Lock and Release Lock steps to lock and release a process in a specified environment.

Locks are typically used to prevent specific processes from modifying the same resource at the same time, for example, when a database is updated.

In an Acquire Lock step, the process tries to acquire a lock with the specified name. If there is no other lock with the same name, the process acquires the lock and continues. If another process is using a lock with the same name, the process waits until the lock is released by the other process. Any processes that access the resource without a lock or with a lock of a different name do not wait on this lock.

Locks are released automatically when the process completes. If you need to release a lock before continuing later steps in a process, use the Release Lock step.

Administrators can also release locks. For details, see Manage locks.

The following table describes the properties for these steps.

Property	Description
Lock Name	Specify the lock name. The default setting is as follows: ${p:application.name}-${p:applicationProcess.name}-${p:environment.name} Tip: The default lock name setting is set with a default variable. To make the lock names the same for different objects and processes, enter a static string for the name or use variables that resolves to the same in both processes. For example, if you want to lock a resource against concurrent use for two processes in different components that are mapped to the same resource, you could use the following lock name for both: ${p:resource.name}.
Hint	Add a comment to the step. To view the comment, point to the step in the design space.

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Set Status step

Use the Set Status step to explicitly set the status of a process.

The following table describes the step's properties.

Property	Description
Status	Select from available statuses, Success or Failed.
Hint	Add a comment to the step. To view the comment, point to the step in the design space.

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Process Sleep step

The Process Sleep step enables you to set time (in seconds) for a process to wait until continuing with the next steps.

The following table describes the step's properties.

Property	Description
Sleep Time	Enter the time period (in seconds) for the process to suspend activity. The default setting is 30 seconds.
Hint	Add a comment to the step. To view the comment, point to the step in the design space.

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Join step

Use the Join step to join steps in a process.

There are no properties for this step.

For the Join step to proceed to its outbound connections, all its inbound connection paths must be valid. To be valid, those that should evaluate to success do so, those that should evaluate to failure do so, those that should evaluate to any value do so, and those that should evaluate to a specific switch value do so.

You can do an implicit join without the Join step by having multiple inbound connections for another step. Regardless of whether it is an implicit or explicit join, all incoming connections must be valid for the joining step to run.

The Join step is useful when your process includes multiple steps that must all complete to a certain outcome and then continue on to multiple outbound steps without additional processing between them.

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Manual Application Task step

With the Manual Application Task step, you can interrupt a process until manual intervention is performed according to a preconfigured application task.

You must create application tasks before you can select them for this step. For details, see Create application tasks.

The following table describes the step's properties.

Property	Description
Name	Enter a descriptive name for the step.
Task Definition	Select a previously created user-defined task. For details on creating application tasks, see Create application tasks.
Environment Role	Select the role you want to respond to the task. The user mapped to this role must respond to the generated work item before the process can continue.
Application Role	Select the role you want to respond to the task. The user mapped to this role must respond to the generated work item before the process can continue.
Hint	Add a comment to the step. To view the comment, point to the step in the design space.

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Inventory Update step

The Inventory Update step becomes available in Utility steps only if you select Advanced for the Inventory Management option when you create the application process.

Use this step to implement your own inventory management process.

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Annotation

An Annotation enables you to create a text note that you can then connect to a process step. This feature is especially useful in complex processes when you need to explain specific steps.

The following table describes the Annotation properties.

Property	Description
Annotation	Enter a message of the annotation.
Style	Select the background color for the annotation.

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See also:

• Define and use statuses
• Inventory management
• Configure email notifications